


The Red of His Name

by aban_asaara



Series: Month of Fanfiction 2017 [9]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Chinese Mythology & Folklore, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Japanese Mythology & Folklore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2019-10-05 02:22:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17316257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aban_asaara/pseuds/aban_asaara
Summary: Rain, and an abandoned mansion by a lake where a dragon is said to dwell.A reimagining of Fenris and Hawke in an East Asian medieval setting.





	The Red of His Name

**Author's Note:**

> Month of Fanfiction - Day 10 - An AU. An established romance between Fenris and Hawke transposed into a Chinese/Japanese medieval setting, with a generous dusting of mythological and cultural references.
> 
> I translated their names (or tried to, anyway): Takanohime is Princess/Lady Hawk; Xiaolang is literally written “little wolf” (although the actual meaning is apparently “coyote” haha), and Shaoran is just the approximate pronunciation in Japanese. I should also mention that dragons are associated with rainfall and water in East Asian mythology.

Takanohime hooked her fingers around the string of red silk, diamond figures crisscrossing the space between her hands. Her thumbs slipped over the string, then under, pulled it down, twisted it around her fingers, then let it loose.

“They say that a bunny rabbit lives in the moon,” she said from above the tangle of knots and loops, “pounding rice cakes.”

She gave the string a few tugs, and it settled between her hands into the double-loop shape of a rabbit’s ears as she held it up for him to see.

Then she grinned, the scarlet of her lips parting onto teeth lacquered black.

“I’ve heard that it’s the moon goddess,” Xiaolang replied, “making her elixir of life.”

The rustle of her silks was not unlike the endless sigh of the rain that fell past the open screens, onto the sloping eaves of the mansion, the stones lining the alley that led to the lake, the pond in the garden. The fog had palled all colour—even the long stalks of the irises and the flame-bright flickers of the fish in the water—so that all that remained was the red of her mouth, of her robe’s lining as it hung about her waist, of the silken string hanging loose from her fingers.

It was the red of temple roofs in the imperial capital, of the channels once etched into his skin, of the cinnabar that stained his master’s teeth. It was the red that came after swallows of orpiment, the red that fell before his eyes whenever his ghosts found him, the red of the name that had been bestowed upon him like a brand.

“Xiaolang,” it would come spilling with a mouthful of blood, “my little wolf.”

His name was no less red when spoken—whispered, breathed, laughed—from Takanohime’s lips in the strange tongue of the Eight Islands, but he had grown fond of it, as he had the flush that crept up her neck.

 _Shaoran_.

“They say that an old man lives in the moon,” Takanohime said, folding her knees to sit on her heels on the straw mat where he lay reclined, “tying the pinkies of destined lovers together with a length of red thread.” As she spoke, she loosed the rabbit string figure to loop the red silk around her little finger instead.

“Ankles,” Xiaolang replied, giving the string a tug just to watch her cheeks puff up. “He ties them together by the ankle.”

The collar of her underrobe hung loose, and he glimpsed the swell of her breast as she bent over his leg. The silken string was as soft as the whisper of the rain, as the scent of wet earth and warm stones; her touch, even softer as she coiled the cord around his ankle with the barest brush of her fingers. He’d had her thrice already since she had come to him with the night, an umbrella of oiled scarlet in one hand and a wisp of light in the other, but already he longed again for his name, choked into her sleeve.

Sometimes he wondered if he had not been bewitched by a fox in disguise. Sometimes he wondered if it wasn’t she who haunted the abandoned mansion by the lake, as claimed the townspeople. She had the numinous aura of another realm about her, the mesmerism of a shapeshifter, not the daughter of a disgraced house.

But when his name floated on her lips like the fragrance of sandalwood she sprinkled onto the embers of the brazier in the fall, he found he did not care.

 _Shaoran_.

Her hand slid up his thigh. “What do you say we go live in the moon, too? Eat rice cakes all day long with bunny rabbits and celestial maidens?”

“Tempting,” he breathed past the heat that rose inside him, “but isn’t it a bit far?”

“Then we wait for the month of falling leaves,” she replied as he hardened into her hand, “when the moon is close enough to touch.”

After, Takanohime rose up on tiptoes on the verandah, toes curled around the very edge, clung to a pillar with one hand to stretch her arm out and let the rain sheeting down the eaves wash his seed off her palm. “They say that a dragon dwells in the lake,” she said, peering through the mists in the direction of the lake.

“So I’ve heard. Perhaps it is to blame for all this rain.”

“I think I’d like to be a dragon,” she mused, a smile tugging at her red mouth. “Make clouds and rain all day.”

Xiaolang felt himself blush; clouds and rain meant lovemaking in the stories and poems she helped him read. She glided along the fragrant cedar floor to let the rainwater drip from her hand onto the small potted pine in the corner of the room, for the sole pleasure, it seemed, of watching the needles shiver under the droplets.

She had given it to him, as she had most things he owned: the new rice-paper screens, the inkwell and the scrolls, a small case of lacquered cherrywood crested with the twin hawks of her house, which he wore hanging from his sash. A blade of jeweled steel, folded a thousand times over. Pairs of seashells painted with half a verse each, to be matched together. The first lines of a poem for him to finish.

He had not owned anything before he escaped the heart of the Middle Kingdom, sailed with pirates to the eastern string of islands, and heard his name spoken in its tongue for the first time.

 _Shaoran_.

“I wonder if we might not see the dragon if we go to the lake while it rains,” Takanohime said.

Her voice lilted with a note of almost childish exhilaration that teased a smile out of him. “And then what? Will you ask it to make it stop raining?”

“I was rather thinking of paying my respects for giving me such a convenient excuse to stay here,” she replied, grinning at him from above her shoulder.

Had anyone else said it, it would have been naught more than mere fancy—but she slid the sash loose from around her waist, then cast off her layers of silk as a cicada does its shell. Her hair cascaded down her back like spilled ink. As she stepped down the stone stairs, strewn with grasses, the downpour haloed her naked form, and Xiaolang envied the raindrops that slid down her skin. The Dragon God, perhaps, come as rain for the chance to touch her.

His hands were untying his sash before he even knew it. “You lead me to strange places,” he said as he went after her. The rain washed away the ache of his old scars the way her caress did, and together they went deeper into the downpour, he with only the red of the string around his ankle, and she, the red of his name on her lips.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hello on [Tumblr](https://aban-asaara.tumblr.com/)!


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